


tired of being careful

by ohpcysh



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Stranger Things AU, They have superpowers, but not really??, chanyeol is an experiment of the seoul national laboratory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 00:22:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohpcysh/pseuds/ohpcysh
Summary: They say Chanyeol is the hope and future of them all, but who is going to be Chanyeol's?





	tired of being careful

**Author's Note:**

> This is my part for the first round of ChanHun Shiritori between my friends and I.
> 
> Read the other parts here: [1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12706794/chapters/28976745), [2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12734892), [3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12751944/chapters/29088831)
> 
> Rose, your next!!
> 
>  
> 
> p.s. this is unedited

In and out. 

Chanyeol’s been forced in and out of similar rooms to this for as long as he can remember.

This time there is a little boy, he’s sitting on the other side of the glass, playing with a red toy truck, dragging it in circles around him. Chanyeol thinks he’s cute. His hair is long and straight, falling into his eyes with every turn he makes. Chanyeol sometimes wishes he had hair.

He places his elbows on the table before him, leaning in towards the glass. The little boy really is little. Chanyeol remembers when he used to be small, remembers playing with the same red truck.

“Do you like him?” Father asks. He’s sitting by Chanyeol at the table, also observing the little boy. Father has white hair that falls into his eyes too.

Chanyeol shrugs, he doesn’t know. Is he meant to like him?

“You know you shouldn’t, right, sweetheart?”

“I know,” Chanyeol says. Never get attached is what he has been taught since young.

“Good. This boy is nothing special,” Father says. Chanyeol feels his hand rubbing at his shoulder and he leans back into it. “Now, do you remember what you did to the little kitty awhile back? Can you do the same to him?”

“Fire?” He asks.

“Fire.”

“No,” Chanyeol says. He doesn’t want to hurt the boy. 

“Why not, Chanyeol? Without practice you won’t be able to help us destroy the evil,” his father says. “Please do it. For me?”

Chanyeol thinks about it. Sometimes he still hears the cries of the cat in the middle of the night, the smell of burning flesh still lingers in the back of his throat, but Father’s disappointed face is nothing he ever wants to see. 

“Okay,” he says finally, “I’ll do it.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Chanyeol has been in the lab, wearing the same blue coloured gown and sleeping on the same bed in the same small room with the same brown stuffed bear for as long as he remembers. This is where he belongs, his father always tells him. He is the hope and future of them all, the one that is going to destroy the evil. 

He has seen it more than a few times already, sometimes in his dreams, other times during his episodes, but mostly it’s when they have him lie in the metal tub filled to the brim with ice cubes, when they whisper in his ears and have him think of nothing else but the black rapidly rotating column of air that’s going to swallow all of them up whole.

They say he is the one that is going to destroy the evil, but the thought alone has Chanyeol curling up on himself. How can he fight it when even the sound of the wind moving the tree branches outside his window has him shivering in fear.

 

 

\--

 

 

It’s finally the big day. Father had walked into Chanyeol’s room last night, held his hand and told him how proud he was, how he was so lucky to have had Chanyeol by his side for the past twenty odd years. Chanyeol had nervously smiled back, the nice words coming out of Father’s mouth did not matched the hard look in his eyes.

The barging in of the officers only when sunlight has just started to light up the room from the little gaps between the white blinds is really no surprise, the yellow suits and the gas masks however, is something Chanyeol’s never seen before.

He stares tensely as two guards walk up to him, one on either side of his bed and Chanyeol shrinks in on himself, fingers digging into his mattress. Smoke starts to evoke from where each finger is, but he doesn’t care. The fear is so real now he can taste it.

They lift him up from his elbows, Chanyeol screams at them to let go. There are more officers standing by the doorway, they step forward when Chanyeol manages to kick one of the ones holding him in the knee. They grab his feet and stretch him out so he’s staring up at the ceiling. Chanyeol tips his head back, sees Father standing at the corner of his room and screams, screams even when he’s taken out of the room and can no longer can see him.

The light bulbs above burst into flames one by one as they pass them until there is no more for Chanyeol to release his anger onto, which could only mean they are getting close. He struggles some more before giving up. He’s just scared, Chanyeol tries to convince himself. He knows he can take on the evil, likes to think Father wouldn’t send him down unless he was absolutely sure Chanyeol can defeat it.

The room they finally set him down in is dark, but there are little flakes of light floating around everywhere that light up the place. Chanyeol tries to catch one but they go right through his hand.

Taking up one complete side of the room is a big tree stump, at least eight feet tall. The roots are wiggling about everywhere, some have wrapped themselves around the stump, some are stretched out, trying to reach at Chanyeol’s feet. He draws them to himself, eyeing the tree warily. Somewhere along the middle there seems to be a split, a brown gooey substance leaks onto the roots and and pools around the base of the stump, and slowly the split opens up to reveal a faintly illuminated red transparent wall.

One of the guards taps his shoulder and Chanyeol turns to him in confusion. The guard points a finger in the direction of the stump, “Go in.” is all he says.

 _Oh_. Chanyeol finally gets it. This is it, the entrance to the Upside Down - the one that has been haunting him for years and years.

He shakes his head in response, looking around the room for Father. He’s standing behind the glass wall separating this room from the one before, observing, always observing.

“No,” Chanyeol says, “Father, please, no.”

Father taps at the microphone in front of him. The sound is sharp and clear, Chanyeol sees some of the roots trying to reach out to him pull back abruptly at the noise. “You are ready for this,” he says. He still has that hard look in his eyes.

“I am going to die,” Chanyeol says.

“You won’t die, I promise.”

 

 

\--

 

 

The Upside Down looks exactly how it does whenever the men in long white coats have him visualise it, but it’s much, much colder. Chanyeol’s teeth chatter against each other as he gingerly makes his way through the tunnel. The same roots from before are in here too, trying to grasp at his arms. He hits them with the back of his hand, the slimy liquid covering them make his hands sticky. 

One of them suddenly succeeds, it wraps around Chanyeol’s wrist and pulls him to the side of the tunnel, another tightens around his ankle and from there they keep on coming, tightening and tightening around him and suddenly, he’s so mad, so mad at this world, so mad for the life he’s missed. Everything hurts and Chanyeol doesn’t know who to blame. He cries and cries, cries for so long that he doesn’t even realise when the roots melt off his body, doesn’t realise that he has managed to create a pathway out of fire. No roots, no cold.

He takes the path, the gooey substance on the ground soaking through his canvas shoes. It leads him to another transparent wall, this time blue. Chanyeol pushes his hand through first, just to test things out, and blue goo seeps from the wall and trails down his wrist. He pushes his whole body through next, stumbling as a force pushes him through to the other side. It’s even colder here, the liquid covering him from head to toe doesn’t make things any better either, but this seems to be the right way, his surroundings look somewhat similar to the ones around the lab whenever he glances out of the window in Dr Jung’s office.

Chanyeol forms a plan, the sooner he gets this done, the sooner he can go back. He ducks into the closest building he can find, there are tables and chairs, lots of them, and a platform at the front. Everything is covered in the same blue substance and what appears to be dead roots are also covering half of the place. He closes the door behind him, peeking through the little slit at the bottom of it for anything that might be following him. It’s clear.

Chanyeol leans back against the door, taking off his backpack in the process and emptying the content in front of him. The small walkie-talkie he brought with him is a little wet and Chanyeol worries for a second, scared that it wouldn’t work. His worries are soon dismissed however, when as soon as he presses the power button and closes his eyes, Father’s voice fills his head.

“I’m here,” Chanyeol says out loud.

The sounds stop for a second before Father’s voice is heard again. “Chanyeol,” he says, sounding a lot like he’s relieved. “Can you hear me clearly?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol breathes out in reply.

“Good, good. I want you to try finding it now, okay? Don’t focus on us, focus on what you saw before.” Father sounds nervous now, his voice perfectly replicating Chanyeol’s own emotions.

Chanyeol opens his eyes so he can no longer hear their voices. His hands shake and there is a lump in his throat that won’t go away no matter how many times he swallows. The sooner he gets this done, the sooner he can go back, he repeats to himself as he shuts his eyes again.

The first thing Chanyeol has to do is try and feel it, most of the time it starts with his feet, other times it he can feel it hitting the back of his neck, leaving goosebumps in its wake. This time, however, he can not feel it.

He thinks of cold air blowing against the trees behind the lab whenever the weather changes from warm to cold, making the orange and red leaves fall and hit the ground, he thinks about the jostling of the metal fences outside the building he’s kept in whenever there is thunder and lightning and finally Chanyeol thinks about the last time they lay him in ice, thinks of the whirlwind, the hurricane he saw, but nothing comes. Nothing but pitch black.

Chanyeol takes a deep breath and thinks again, thinks back to when he was a child and Father gifted him a handheld fan during a very hot summer, and this time, he finally sees something.

Chanyeol sees a boy. The boy is hugging his knees to his chest and sitting in the corner of a dirty room with goo covered roots surrounding him. He is pale and the clothes he’s wearing look filthy. Chanyeol thinks he might be dying, but even all the filth, grime and grey skin can’t take away from the fact that he is simply beautiful.

The boy’s name echoes in Chanyeol’s head even after he has snapped his eyes open.

“Sehun.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading ♡ 
> 
> hope this wasn't too bad of a start, i've literally not wrote anything since 2013 lol.


End file.
